Alternatively, there are people on both the far left and the far right who don't care about free speech norms.https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1417904417395908608 …
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Replying to @jonathanchait
What about liberals who don't care about free speech norms -- for example the Cold War liberals who enabled McCarthyism, spied on MLK, and used the FBI to attack the Panthers and the anti-war left?
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Replying to @HeerJeet @jonathanchait
I mean, they're mostly dead. So ...
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Replying to @_Chris_Golding_ @jonathanchait
Okay, do you think Obama was standing up for free speech when his administration fired Shirley Sherrod?
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Replying to @HeerJeet @jonathanchait
I don't think liberals have a perfect track record. Generally speaking, in-power parties struggle with this for somewhat obvious reasons. A whataboutism pointing to 70 years ago is ... not intellectually serious, however. Neoconservatism stems from liberal thought at that time.
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Replying to @_Chris_Golding_ @jonathanchait
Chait has repeatedly claimed the patrimony of Cold War liberalism including in a piece today!
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Replying to @HeerJeet @jonathanchait
Sure, we all live in that environment. And his piece today was certainly correct about the lingering effects of that era on political discourse (on all sides). Your original point was still a specious counter to his response to Hayes, and the current cancel culture war.
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Replying to @_Chris_Golding_ @jonathanchait
Chait's argument is that free speech is threatened by the far left and far right. That's a traditional Cold War liberal framing (dating back to Schlesinger's Vital Center). The blind spot is not seeing that centrist liberalism can also be illiberal (as history shows). Specious?
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Replying to @HeerJeet @jonathanchait
Chait's argument there is that the far left and far right do not care about free speech norms (I think that is correct, for what it's worth). Between those two poles, the story is murkier as a defining feature is power and situational self-interest.
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I don't think it's accurate to say far left doesn't care about free speech. Some do and some don't (ACLU was partly founded by far left). Same as liberals. Framing Chait presents does a disservice to actual history of free speech, its defenders & opponents.
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Replying to @HeerJeet @jonathanchait
I don't know. One could say drawing a straight line from the 1920s to the 2020s is doing a disservice to history, too.
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